The Day Sin died.

by - Wed Jun 22, 2005 13:29

Cardinal Sin, who died yesterday aged 76, blithely ignored the Roman Curia's nervous disapproval of clergy becoming directly involved in politics when, amid a blaze of international publicity, he played a key part in bringing down President Ferdinand Marcos's regime in the Philippines.

A man of ready wit, well aware of his comically inappropriate name, Sin initially trod a cautious line on becoming Archbishop of Manila in 1976. Although he and Marcos did not always see eye to eye, he remarked, they could work hand in hand. If he did not attend to the spiritual needs of the president and his wife Imelda by saying Mass at the presidential palace, he asked: "Who will?" But as discontent rose, and the regime became noticeably richer and more repressive, Sin twitted them with jokes.

One concerned an unnamed woman, whom nobody could fail to guess was named Imelda. She was given to pointing to the country's mines and saying: "That mine, that's mine." When Marcos said that he admired the United States because the people knew the result of an election the day after it was held, Sin is said to have replied, "You should admire the Filipino people - they know the results before the election."

On another occasion he even likened himself to Jesus, saying that, seated between the Marcoses, he felt that he was being "crucified between two thieves". The relationship plummeted irretrievably when government troops raided a seminary in the belief that it was harbouring insurgents. By 1978 Sin was on a list of those not permitted to travel abroad, although a protest by his fellow bishops soon freed him to visit Pope Paul VI, who had appointed him cardinal.

But it was after the opposition leader Benigno Aquino was murdered at Manila airport as he returned from exile in 1983 that Sin's criticisms increased. He warned that there was an ugly mood in the country, which could lead to results that would hurt the poor. When Ronald Reagan pushed Marcos into a general election, Sin urged Aquino's widow Cory to run. As the government became more repressive in its efforts to win the vote, the national bishops' conference issued increasingly outspoken pastoral letters.

After Marcos's victory, Mrs Aquino used the Church's radio station to call for non-violent resistance, prompting the defence minister and vice-chief of the defence staff to break with Marcos. As troops marched on their headquarters, Sin went on air calling "all the children of God" to protect the two former government members. During the next three days, hundreds of thousands of unarmed Filipinos formed a human shield in Manila's Avenue of the Epiphany of the Saints, pressing rosaries and sandwiches on the tank crews and thrusting flowers down the barrels of their guns and prevented them reaching the errant pair.

Soon Marcos fled to Hawaii. The whole episode was a miracle, Sin declared, "scripted by God, directed by the Virgin Mary and starring the Filipino people". After attending a large open-air Mass with President Aquino, he visited the Soviet Union and China before arriving in Rome. At his audience with Pope John Paul II, Sin declared that a moral dimension, not a political one, had been involved in the recent events. "He smiled because he understands," Sin explained afterwards. "He comes from Poland."

Jaime Sin was born at New Washington on the Philippine island of Panay on August 31 1928, the 14th child of a Chinese shopkeeper who converted from Buddhism before his marriage to a Filipina of Spanish extraction. Jaime's mother encouraged the boy in his vocation by telling him that, as the ugliest of her children, he would become a priest. He went to the local elementary school, then entered the St Vincent Ferrer diocesan seminary.

When this closed after the Japanese invaded the Philippines in 1941, Sin lived with five retired priests, and transcribed Voice of America broadcasts for parishioners, even though this was strictly forbidden by the occupiers. On returning to the seminary after the war, he found the academic work hard, but kept a notebook in which he wrote down messages asking the Virgin Mary to help him pass his exams. In one, he said that he would never be a good priest because of his asthma, and never suffered an attack again.

After being ordained in 1954, Sin went to work in a mountain parish where he travelled by foot and on horseback around parishes with no priests. He then became the first rector of the St Pius X seminary at Roxas City, for which he first had to raise money for a building. After qualifying as a teacher, he had his own half-hour radio programme; his reputation for breathing life into diocesan organisations led to his being promoted to archbishop of Jaro and then of Manila. When Pope Paul VI appointed him cardinal in 1976, Sin was the youngest member of the College of Cardinals and one of the few from a developing country.

As archbishop in a country of 73 million, of whom 85 per cent are Catholic, Sin was delighted to welcome the Pope; but the Marcoses' determination to milk the trip for every advantage further impaired relations. Mrs Marcos was to be found waiting at each stopping point to greet the Pope. By the end of the visit she was comparing the cardinal privately to the Ayatollah Khomeini. When she inaugurated a Manila film festival to rival Cannes, the cardinal accused her of letting loose "a river of pornography and filth". The president's response was to say that he would have to start arresting cinema managers. His wife was more outspoken: she called the cardinal "a Communist homosexual".

Even the Vatican bureaucracy could find Sin a problem. It was not overly grateful when he visited China and had clergy from the pro-Communist Patriotic Catholic Association pressing notes into his hand claiming that they were loyal to the Pope. However, he reported that when he met Pope John Paul II there was no note of reproof.

Once Marcos had gone, Sin was keenly aware of the continuing threat posed by the Filipino Communists, who were claiming that Mrs Aquino was as bad as the former president. When it was suggested that Marcos might be brought home for trial, he declared that it would do nobody any good.

Sin remained close to Mrs Aquino and, for a while, things went well. Then all the old problems re-emerged: she was succeeded as president by Joseph Estrada, a womanising, heavy-drinking former film star under whom it became government policy to issue condoms to control the birth rate. When the former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell arrived to publicise women's rights to "reproductive health" for the United Nations, Sin tartly declared that he knew she had a record to promote but she should keep out of an issue of which she knew little.

As revelations about Estrada's involvement with gambling interests emerged, Sin and Mrs Aquino launched another demonstration of "people power", which led to a senate impeachment trial and Estrada being jailed.

In recent years, Sin's political involvement exasperated some younger Filipinos, who could not remember the Marcos years; they saw him as bearing some responsibility for the country's continuing turbulence, and he was not unaware of the contradictions involved. When it was suggested that he might succeed John Paul II as Pope, he would remark that a prospective candidate for the papacy must be highly intelligent and prudent - "and I cannot find these qualities in me".

Asked by Oliver Foot of Orbis, the flying eye charity, if he would donate his eyes to them, Sin - not realising that Foot meant after Sin's death - said doubtfully: "Perhaps I could spare one."

When he retired in 2003 because of illness (which prevented him from attending the conclave which elected Pope Benedict XVI), he defended his role by saying that "politics without Christ is the greatest scourge of our nation".

He added: "I beg pardon from those I might have led astray or hurt. Please remember me kindly."

Sin's deft wit is likely to live on. He once quipped that the fastest ways of communicating in the Philippines were "telephone, telegram and tell-a-nun"; and he had a sign proclaiming that those who called on him were entering "the House of Sin".

Obituary published in the Telegraph.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005

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